The 62-year-old mother-of-two was found at her home in Malahide, north Dublin, sources said.

Price, the former wife of actor Stephen Rea, was a convicted Provisional IRA car bomber for the 1973 attack on London's Old Bailey courts in which one man died and more than 200 people were injured.

A garda spokesman said officers were investigating the sudden death of a woman at a home on St Margaret's Road in Malahide at around 10pm on Wednesday night.

Her death is not being treated as suspicious.

Price had been outspoken about Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams's alleged involvement with the IRA for several years. Along with her 58-year-old sister Marian, who has been imprisoned in Northern Ireland since 2011 after her licence was revoked, they were both critics of the peace process.

In 1973 the two sisters were part of the IRA unit that planted four car bombs outside the Old Bailey. Two of the bombs exploded.

Dolours Price, sentenced to life for the bombing, accused Mr Adams of sanctioning the court attack. She also alleged that he personally ordered the abduction of several people the IRA considered to be traitors in the 1970s, including Belfast mother of 10 Jean McConville.

Mr Adams has always denied ever being a member of the IRA.

Price claimed she made the allegations on the record to researchers working for Boston College in the US, which the Police Service of Northern Ireland has been battling to recover as evidence. The recordings were made on the basis that they remain secret until the death of the 28 former IRA and Ulster Volunteer Force terrorists who took part.